My Gram died this summer. I have been close to her and my Papa most of my life (in terms of relationship…for most of my life we were fairly far from each other in terms of geography), and the temporary loss remains deeply painful. This week I want to share the tribute I wrote for her funeral. May it be an example to you of how one generation can shepherd another generation in the ways of God.

Gram was so beautiful. She was always very concerned about her appearance, but she shouldn’t have been. She was beautiful. Death has a way of causing us to look back over the life of the one who has died, and as I did that over the past couple of weeks, my memories came almost in a series of vignettes that show her servant love.

As a child, I would sometimes get to be with Gram and Papa all by myself (this is almost as much about Papa as it is about Gram because, in my memory, Gram and Papa are inextricably linked together). I’m sure Gram was a very busy woman, but she set aside everything when I came to visit and gave unstintingly of her time.

She taught me how to bake and how to sew. She taught me how to swim and dive and play tennis. I’m sure she tried to teach me how to draw, but that lesson just didn’t take. She taught me how to welcome people into my home.

The next flash of memory is from my undergrad days at Harding.

So many weekends found me and a whole gaggle of my friends showing up on Vallejo Drive. It was a much closer drive than coming home, and I took full advantage. Copious amounts of home-cooked food (with many leftovers finding their way back into the dorm rooms of all who came), a listening ear to whatever problems I was dealing with, wisdom to share for how to be like Jesus, all of these were dealt out with a free hand in their home. Also, a few rescues from car troubles or accidents.

There are memories from my teaching days.

Again, I would escape to Gram and Papa’s for food, solace, and wisdom when life felt hard. Again, they would welcome me with open arms unconditionally. Always free to offer advice and counsel, but never holding it against me if I didn’t follow it. I learned quickly, however, that it usually worked out best when I followed it.

I remember bringing my choir students to sing at their little country church and give a singing class (they didn’t think bringing the band kids would have worked out quite so well…) and Gram and Papa throwing us a huge shindig out at The Place (their farm outside of Dallas). Those kids talked about the love that they felt and the food that they ate for months afterward.

The trips to Dallas didn’t happen quite so often after I moved back to Illinois, but I was very happy to discover a direct flight from Champaign to Dallas.

I flew pregnant, with an infant, with a toddler and pregnant…you get the idea. Every time, even when I brought with me a baby who wouldn’t sleep through the night, I was welcomed and loved. Gram would serve me so unselfishly every time I came so that I, as a young mother, could have a little break. She cared for me and my family, played with my babies so I could take a nap, sent me home with food so that I didn’t have to cook as much… Gram’s love always came out in service.

Which is the way it should be.

I’m not as good at it as she was, but I learned at her feet how to show Jesus love to those around me.

I am so grateful for the years we had with Gram living here in Springfield.

We were able to have so many more deep conversations about life and parenting and marriage. My girls were able to know her so much better than if she had still been in Dallas. I am grateful for the extra time my girls had with her, to be able to learn that kind of servant love from one who did it so well.

When I asked my girls about their memories of her, asked about what they loved about Gram, what came out most was her gift of her time and attention. Not everyone pays close attention to children, but Gram did. She played with them, did art with them, gave them little jobs like washing toys, and then did those jobs right along with them. My girls remembered Gram talking with them, taking them seriously. They remember her patiently explaining (probably for the one hundredth time) what every carved bird in her glass case was.

I’ll admit that I am greedy for more time. More time to just BE with Gram, more time to listen to her and soak up all of her knowledge and wisdom, more time to learn how to love like she loved, more time for my girls to know her, for my youngest to be able to remember her.

Yet I know that I have a choice in all of this. I can choose to be angry with God, letting my anger and grief drive me away from Him, or I can choose to be obedient and thank Him, clinging to Him and letting Him be all that I need.

So at least for today, I will choose this:

Thank You, Father, for the gift of my Papa and my Gram.

Thank You for giving me so many years with them, years of such close relationship and of so many beautiful times with them.Thank You for giving them so many talents and abilities and for giving them the desire to teach and share those skills with me and my family.

Thank You for their wisdom, for all that I have learned from them, for all of the wisdom that I now have stored in my own heart, wisdom that I can now pass on to their great-grandchildren. To the next generation.

Thank You most of all for making their hearts like Yours. Thank You for allowing me to see You in them, to see in their lives how You want me to live. Thank You for showing me through them how to live faithfully as a child of Yours, as a spouse and as a parent.

Thank You for the beauty that is their lives.

Thank You, God, for Your grace.

Gone From My SightHenry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,

spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts

for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck

of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,

hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Crosses and empty tombs.

This is what life is made up of. Death and rebirth.

Seeds that die in the ground in order to bloom glorious, winter death that must happen in order to burst into green, the dying to self that is the only way into joy.

Crosses and empty tombs.

We are facing a couple of crosses in our family right now.

Really, just the possibility of crosses.

Although, as I sit quiet in candle-lit dark, it occurs to me that perhaps this waiting, this living in the possibility of a cross is, in itself, a cross.

What will I do when the cross looms large in my sight?

Where will I place these fears when all that crowds my vision is rough-hewn wood and sharp metal nails?

Will I continue to hope in the promise of an empty tomb at the end of the cross?

I must. If I have to drop to my knees and beg God to help me, I must remember.

If I am to survive any cross, whether heavy or light, I must pray, I must fast, I must fling myself by any means possible into the hands of the One who bore the heaviest cross of all…the One who then emptied that tomb.

Jesus promised us crosses. We are to expect them. And He also promised us empty tombs in the end. It may not happen until the end, but He gave His word that He would make those tombs empty again.

So I must remember. I must remember that God broke into time to show us that the empty tomb will always follow the cross.

I must remember the times in my own story when God brought an empty tomb after a cross.

When I cannot see beyond my cross, when I cannot trust on my own, I must look to Jesus who proved that His power and love are strong enough to bring forth an empty tomb after every single cross.

I must remember

and hope.

Crosses and empty tombs. They always go hand in hand.

Lord, we pray we never find ourselves without hope, without a glimpse of the empty tomb each time we happen upon a cross. Help us begin our daily journey expecting both crosses and empty tombs and rejoicing when we encounter either because we know you are with us. Amen. ~ from the Book of Common Prayer

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Crosses and empty tombs.

This is what life is made up of. Death and rebirth.

Seeds that die in the ground in order to bloom glorious, winter death that must happen in order to burst into green, the dying to self that is the only way into joy.

Crosses and empty tombs.

We are facing a couple of crosses in our family right now.

Really, just the possibility of crosses.

Although, as I sit quiet in candle-lit dark, it occurs to me that perhaps this waiting, this living in the possibility of a cross is, in itself, a cross.

What will I do when the cross looms large in my sight?

Where will I place these fears when all that crowds my vision is rough-hewn wood and sharp metal nails?

Will I continue to hope in the promise of an empty tomb at the end of the cross?

I must. If I have to drop to my knees and beg God to help me, I must remember.

If I am to survive any cross, whether heavy or light, I must pray, I must fast, I must fling myself by any means possible into the hands of the One who bore the heaviest cross of all…the One who then emptied that tomb.

Jesus promised us crosses. We are to expect them. And He also promised us empty tombs in the end. It may not happen until the end, but He gave His word that He would make those tombs empty again.

So I must remember. I must remember that God broke into time to show us that the empty tomb will always follow the cross.

I must remember the times in my own story when God brought an empty tomb after a cross.

When I cannot see beyond my cross, when I cannot trust on my own, I must look to Jesus who proved that His power and love are strong enough to bring forth an empty tomb after every single cross.

I must remember

and hope.

Crosses and empty tombs. They always go hand in hand.

Lord, we pray we never find ourselves without hope, without a glimpse of the empty tomb each time we happen upon a cross. Help us begin our daily journey expecting both crosses and empty tombs and rejoicing when we encounter either because we know you are with us. Amen. ~ from the Book of Common Prayer

And not that “still, small voice” of God’s way down in the depths of their hearts, either.

They explained it away. They looked for the rain that must come since it was thundering, or even went so far as to call it an angel.

Anything but the voice of God.

Some things are too astounding, too wondrous for our hearts to accept.

The resurrection is one of those things.

The resurrection is anything but dull. The story of God becoming man, being defeated by man, and rising again to defeat death is the most heroic tale of all.

That man should play the tyrant over God and find Him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed. ~ Dorothy Sayers

But it is hard to accept that we cannot save ourselves. It is humiliating to acknowledge that there is absolutely no way we can cleanse our own hearts. It is a bitter and unendurable truth that we are hopelessly imprisoned in our shadows and darkness.

The resurrection throws its light over our darkness in such a daring, audacious way that our helplessness is impossible to ignore.

So we choose to explain away the resurrection or else we attempt to dull its edges so that we cannot be cut.

We choose to explain it away as Jesus’ teachings becoming immortal in the manner of Shakespeare, or as the spirit of Jesus living on in us in the manner of Socrates, or as simply a manner of speaking in the symbolism of the human spirit conquering all.

Yet the resurrection refuses to be explained away.

You can call it nonsense or you can call it lies, but you cannot call it poetry.

You can deny the resurrection and live mired in the fear of inexorable death or you can believe the resurrection and allow it to bring you hopeful life in the now, but you cannot claim to believe in the resurrection and continue on in your darkness and dread.

The remarkable thing about it is that the real truth of the resurrection seems to be too strong for us, because it will not suffer itself to be hidden or concealed in these harmless clothes. ~ Karl Barth

Resurrection always bursts forth, rising up and shouting, “Do you truly believe that the only reason Jesus came, suffered, and died was to bring you empty comfort in the middle of the reality of life?”

No. Unequivocally no. The truth of the resurrection gives us certainty of our outcome. The truth of the resurrection gives us perfect assurance that death is, indeed, defeated and that we are, indeed, able to be presented before God pure and holy.

The truth of the resurrection blazes forth and tells us that everything has changed.

Truth is extraordinary, never dull.

Dark.

There is darkness outside at three in the morning and there is darkness inside of ourselves from which we cannot escape.

Dark.

There is darkness in the middle of a storm and there is darkness in the destructive aftermath when the sun is shining.

Dark.

There is danger in the dark and there is fear, but is it the darkness that we fear or is it whatever lies within the darkness that we cannot see?

We light candles and we plug in nightlights and we busy ourselves to do whatever is necessary to hold the darkness at bay.

What are we really afraid of? Are we afraid that God is not there in the dark? Are we afraid that God is only in the light and if we enter into the darkness, whether it be the darkness of loss or of sin or of depression or even of death, we will lose the glory of His presence?